Best Reptilian Death Match (2006)

Python vs. Alligator

The hindquarters of a six-foot alligator carcass protruded from the exploded torso of a thirteen-foot Burmese python. But it took at least ten minutes of staring at the photo -- a weird montage of claws and tails floating in a reedy marsh, published this past October -- to figure out who had eaten whom. Was it disconcerting for residents of West Kendall to learn that only a few dozen miles away from their comfortable beds, an alligator was literally exploding from confinement inside a python's belly? How does one sleep at night? Local biologists offered a number of theoretical explanations: The dead alligator's postmortem reflexes caused an unfortunately rough twitch of the leg. Or maybe the alligator's carcass had swollen in the early October heat and ruptured the snake with its bulk. The most plausible story, however, involved a third gator, who capitalized on the python's postprandial inertia to take a bite of him. That, at least, explained the snake's missing head.